Reilly helps Patrick with his hard top

The cold weather hasn’t loosened its grip just yet.  For better than a week the temperature has been hovering in a range of ten below zero to ten above.  In the shop it’s been a comfortable 48 degrees (F.) most of the time.  If you dress appropriately, and keep your tools near the heat sources, it’s a zen-like situation.

News came back from B&R’s Garage about the TR3 radiator.  Once Rodney had flushed a river of silt out of it, there wasn’t much to keep water in it, so he installed a new radiator core without a central hand crank hole.  A hand crank is great for setting valve clearances, but what you give up in convenience you more than gain back by the additional tubes which run all the way from the top to the bottom of the core.

A blue Koni with a bad bushing

The owner of the ’63 E-type on which we recently overhauled the IRS had asked us to look for a persistent clunk from the right front.  In the course of replacing the torn tie rod end and ball joint boots (as well as the lower ball joints as it turned out),   Patrick found his clunk.  It was only upon much closer examination that we discovered the these  blue shocks are actually Koni’s.

Not an E-type

Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.  New bushings are on order and we’ll do both front shocks, as the back of the car got a set of Koni’s when the IRS was apart.

While Butch was waiting on the TR3 radiator, we decided to push this forelorn-looking MGB into the shop and put an engine in it and get it running.  Because the clutch was beyond toasted (it took the flywheel with it. too), an exchange flywheel and a new Borg & Beck clutch is where we decided to start.

Meanwhile, if you’re around Key West, Florida this week, keep an eye out for a green MGB with Vermont tags, because Patrick put the hard top on Saturday afternoon and made good on his escape.

Patrick strips an E-type differential output shaft

We’re closing out another week with no road test activity.  Although the roads are clear and dry, the zero to ten degree (fahrenheit) ambient daytime temperatures  are the decisive factor.

Meanwhile, Patrick is moving along with his 2nd E-type IRS overhaul of the month.  He has all the major sub-assemblies stripped, cleaned & painted, and he’s putting it all back together now.  In the photo here he can be seen taking what turned out to be the badly worn taper roller bearings off one of the differential output shafts.  The tool in his right hand is an open-centered output shaft lock nut undoer, specially commissioned by us.

Warner checks TD cam timing

Downstairs currently, Warner is finishing up with the first MG TD engine in our current queue.  There’s quite a bit of information on display here, beginning with the notepad & pen in his left hand and continuing around to the degree wheel underneath the socket wrench in his right.

There are two dial indicators at work on top of the cylinder block.  The dial indicator on the left provides a constant calibration check on the degree wheel, while the one on the right is recording the travel of the cam follower.

We take our timing readings once the cam follower has moved .050″ up the cam lobe because this is the point where the relative velocity of the degree wheel & dial indicator are reversed, which makes it highly accurate.  In fact, a .010″ checking error on the dial indicator may only cause a degree or so of checking error on the degree wheel.  For more about why this matters, see “A Mea Culpa & Some Cam Timing 101″ from this page on May 11, 2011.

Patrick & Butch haul the nose off the TR3

After due deliberation, and with some input from the owner, we decided to do the Right Thing, and take the nose off the TR3.  We’re taking this approach to improve service access to change the fan belt in the future, and for better cooling now, we’re also fitting an optional  “Tropical” fan blade.  Having gotten this far it seemed like a pity to waste the additional effort, so we shipped the radiator off to B&R’s Garage, from where Rodney called to report on a veritable Missippi Delta full of silt which he’s boiling out of the radiator today.

Butch fettles some Morgan sheetmetal

The yellow Morgan +4 is wintering over with us so that we can sort out the loose ends and do a general debugging.  Wednesday we brought it back in so Butch could install the rear passenger compartment panel that closes up the back of the car.  This panel was inadvertantly left out during the painting process, and by our running total,  about a third of  the time on this car has been installing and adjusting things the paint shop forgot to do.  Meanwhile we’re still waiting for some dry roads so we can catch up on our road test work.  We haven’t been able to do any since well before Christmas.

Warner & the XPAG

Also on Wednesday Warner finished up the MGA 1500 engine, which by virtue a set of MGA 1600 pistons, has grown some useful extra displacement, and he’s now into the first of three MG TD engines in our queue.  The MGA engine is upside down on the right, with the final coat of paint only minutes old.  Warner didn’t waste much time shifting gears, as he can be seen here making his final checks on the TD engine prior to commencing assembly. As of the time of this writing, the crankshaft, connecting rods & pistons are fully installed and his next task will be to establish the cam timing.

More work of the geniuses: The fanbelt won't come off

On our Cavalcade of Continuing Complications with the red TR3 which is Butch’s current favorite Bete-Noir, we are dealing with the consequences of a phenomena known as ” A Little Knowledge is A Dangerous Thing”.  We strongly suspect that the same highly skilled technician at Tax Man Motors in Missouri who was responsible for the potentially lethal brake & steering work had half of a good idea about improving the cooling capacity of this red TR3 too.

That’s a later MGB six bladed plastic fan down there, and it’s probably useful improvement over the original four bladed metal Triumph fan.  Butch thought it would be a good idea to replace the worn out fanbelt that was apparently overlooked during the fan installation, but Darn The Luck, there’s not enough room to clear the old belt from between the radiator and the fan blade.  A quarter inch is all we need, but we finished up tonight trying to decide whether to pull the front sheetmetal off the car to get the radiator out of the way, or whether to unbolt the engine & transmission and move them back half an inch.

We’re hopeful a better solution will be in hand tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Warner torques up the con-rods

After taking Christmas week off, and in my case making a quick dash down to Austin, Texas for something I needed,. we’re full bore back to work.  Patrick has finished up one Jaguar E-type IRS and has another one pulled down and cleaned up in preparation for paint and a rebuild.  I’m not worth much at the moment, having had some outpatient surgery done on the 24th, but Warner’s been taking up the slack for me in the engine room, and we shall also check in on Butch shortly.

A plastigage check on connecting rod bearing clearances

Regular readers of these missives will probably recognize the procedure illustrated here on the left: It’s a check for correct connecting rod bearing clearance, in this case on an MGA engine.  They came in at a very favorable .002″  (two thousandths of an inch).  Also, for the true cognoscenti, the splash of yellow paint on the camshaft identifies it as an APT VP 10 BK cam, which arrived here in the box seen in the top of the three drawer shop cart in the first picture.

This crowded scene is in fact a pretty good representation of the fact we’re full speed ahead with engines right now.  We were stopped today on this MGA engine because I sent the oil pump off to New England Engine, the largest engine Warehouse Distributor in the Northeast, who had a customer who needed it more than we did, so Warner switched gears and started assembly of one of the MG TD engines in our queue.

An AC fuel pump kit with something less

Meanwhile, Butch has been laboring mightily with the red TR3 from Tax Man Motors in Missouri. Yesterday he finished his overhaul of the original AC mechanical fuel pump which the owner wisely insisted we rebuild.  Who’d have known about the condition of the paper-thin pump diaphram until it failed ?   Regrettably, after about 50 years of faithful service, the oil seal on the operating arm was on its last legs too, and it isn’t supplied in the overhaul kits.

Butch's handmade seal staked in place

So Butch whipped the Mc Master-Carr catalogue off the shelf and ordered in a sheet of nitrile rubber, which you can see on the right in the picture above and made one.

The worn out seal and its cupped washer are at the bottom of the blue paper shop towel, but he used one of our grade 8 SAE washers to locate it and staked it into the pump body with a cold chisel.  Those are the four 90 degree hash marks.

Brand new Sports Car Services website for hand held devices

In an attempt to make the most of my temporary incapacity, I’ve been working with David Pound at David Pound Advertising Design on some website updates, beginning with a new homepage and other on-going revisions.  Being on the Luddite end of the technology spectrum, I wasn’t aware that Smart Phones and the like have special needs, but David did.  So I wrote the copy and provided the pictures while he did the engineering.  Here’s a picture.

Since not a one of us have a smart phone, we’d be very interested to know what you think of it.